Voters wait in line to cast ballots outside a polling place on Tuesday in Alexandria, Virginia. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)

Election Day was over almost as soon as it started in three tiny New Hampshire towns that voted around midnight Tuesday, with Republican nominee Donald Trump claiming a very early lead.

The towns, each with populations fewer than 100, were the first in the country to finish tallying their votes, thanks to a state law that allows small towns to open polls at the strike of midnight and close them as soon as everyone has voted. Clinton won in two of them, but Trump pulled ahead in the third, giving him a total of 32 votes to Clinton's 25. according to news reports.

Chris Christie conducted a mock trial of Hillary Clinton on Tuesday at the podium of the Republican convention, winding up delegates into furious chants of “Lock Her Up, Lock Her Up.”

Wielding a rhetorical pitchfork, the New Jersey governor and 2016 presidential primary rival of nominee Donald Trump thundered that Clinton was guilty of monumental policy and character failures that he said disqualify her from the presidency.

Vice President Joseph R. Biden, Jr. will campaign with Hillary Clinton for the first time next Friday in Pennsylvania, a key battleground state in the economically hard-hit Rust Belt, her campaign announced Thursday.

Biden and the presumptive Democratic nominee will appear together in Scranton to "discuss their shared commitment to building an America that is stronger together and an economy that works for everyone, not just those at the top," her campaign said in a statement.

The attack on the U.S. facility in Benghazi in 2012 has been the subject of a number of investigations and contentious hearings. (Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call file photo)

The U.S. ambassador killed in Benghazi in 2012 had traveled there to lay the groundwork for a visit from Hillary Clinton a month later and the eventual opening of a permanent U.S. consulate, a report released Tuesday by a Republican-led House panel concluded.

The finding is among the few new pieces of information in sections of the 800-page report that were released to several media outlets overnight, after a two-year and $7 million investigation into the deaths of Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans.

Holmesburg Prison seen from the air in Philadelphia. (Public Domain/Wikimedia Commons)

A fortress-like prison that has been the backdrop for horror movies will be opened in case of mass arrests during the Democratic National Convention. The move is one of several extraordinary steps city officials in Philadelphia and Cleveland have taken to brace for the events.

Tens of thousands of demonstrators are expected to swarm into both cities during the party conventions next month, prompting concerns about potential violence or even terrorist attacks. Republicans meet in Cleveland July 18-21 while the Democrats gather in Philadelphia July 25-28.

Former Donald Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski is an outspoken and bare knuckles political operative whose personal style seemed to mesh with the brash presumptive Republican presidential nominee before he became a lightning rod for criticism.

Lewandowski’s reputation for confrontation, including one landmark incident with a reporter at a Trump rally in Florida, served the business mogul well enough during the political knife fights of the primaries.